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Vessel

VESSEL depicts medical doctor and Greenpeace worker Rebecca Gomperts who, horrified by the realities created by anti-abortion laws around the world, provides abortions on a ship in offshore waters. Her project – Women on Waves – becomes a media frenzy, faced with governmental, religious, and military blockades.

Related Articles and Resources

The Dawn of the Post-Clinic Abortion

“Gomperts no longer works from a boat. Eight years ago she started Women on Web, a “telemedicine support service” for women around the world who are seeking medical abortions. She and a small staff share a one-room office in Amsterdam on a residential street, where red-and-pink flowers bloom on the balconies of brick buildings.”

Whitten on Waves

The Stealth War on Abortion

“On the morning of December 11th, Gretchen Whitmer, the charismatic 42-year-old minority leader of the Michigan Senate, stood before her colleagues in the Statehouse in Lansing, and told them something she’d told almost no one before. ‘Over 20 years ago, I was a victim of rape,’ she said. ‘And thank God it didn’t result in a pregnancy…”

Abortion Restrictions in States

“Forty-one states have enacted abortion restrictions at different stages of pregnancy. The chart below shows at which point after a woman’s last menstrual period that state laws ban abortion. Each bar’s height is proportional to the state’s population.”

Women Matter More Than Fetuses Do

“Public discussion of abortion has come to inexorably privilege fetal life over female life. The imaginary futures—the “personhoods”—of the unborn have taken moral precedence over the adult women in whose bodies they grow. “

How I Lost Faith in the “Pro-Life” Movement

“The spring of my sophomore year of college I was president of my university’s Students for Life chapter. The fall of my junior year of college I cut my ties with the pro-life movement. Five years later I have lost the last shred of faith I had in that movement. This is my story.”